Roll up, roll up – enjoyable instances are right here once more, particularly for us women! Final week we had 2025’s first addition to the bulging information of true-crime tales, with the documentary collection about rapist and serial killer Todd Kohlhepp (The Amazon Evaluate Killer). Now now we have the primary documentary a couple of high-profile star claimed by a number of girls to be a violent sexual predator lengthy enabled by his fame, cash and energy to do precisely as he favored, to as many younger girls as he favored, with out concern of consequence.
Marilyn Manson: Unmasked is a meticulously assembled three-part account of the shock-rock musician’s profession and what was allegedly taking place behind the scenes. All of which, I ought to say, is denied by Manson (actual identify Brian Warner) and on display by his quietly terrifying lawyer Howard King, whose favorite expression appears to be “full fabrication”.
It follows what has change into, depressingly, the normal trajectory of interviewing the accused’s mates and associates, interwoven with testimony from his alleged victims, and permitting the viewer’s viewpoint to evolve. Former bandmate Stephen Bier is emblematic of the battle we see play out in so a lot of what we would name witnesses for the defence in such programmes: eager to not appear unsympathetic, however discovering it laborious to not let an underlying incredulity present by means of. Being on a rock tour, he admits, “is a check of your advantage … And minors have totally different brains, they haven’t developed, et cetera, et cetera. However that’s a authorized downside!” Bier has an unlucky tendency to punctuate his ideas with laughter. He additionally notes that the tour supervisor would write the age of consent up within the bus “as a result of they’re totally different in each state”. He appears to suppose that is proof of one thing good. However, gosh – I’d enterprise that it’s indicative of one thing fairly different.
Manson’s most well-known accuser is his former girlfriend and now movie and tv star Evan Rachel Wooden. She testified at a 2018 congressional listening to relating to a domestic-violence prevention invoice to years of horrific abuse at a associate’s fingers, and later named him as Manson. It inspired different girls to return ahead with comparable tales, and lawsuits towards the musician started to build up. Some he has settled, others are ongoing. In keeping with his followers, Wooden is orchestrating a marketing campaign of lies towards him and persuading different girls to hitch in. Wooden asks if that’s extra seemingly than the notion that “a nasty particular person has been doing unhealthy issues for a very very long time”.
Past setting out the timelines and testimonies that should kind the backbone of this type of documentary, Marilyn Manson: Unmasked teases out the query of how in a position individuals ought to have been to differentiate between performative transgressions designed to shock (and construct the notoriety upon which his profession depended) and a person hiding horrible proclivities in plain sight. There may be plentiful footage of Manson on stage saying to his screaming followers issues like “Which one in all you sixth graders desires me to make you’re feeling like a goddamn eighth grader?” and “Ship a few of these little eighth-grader ladies up right here so I can put my complete arm inside them”, and referring to their “sticky pussies”. I believe most of us would have been on excessive alert by then. However maybe it might rely upon how a lot cash he was making for us. And the way a lot we thought we may blame anybody for getting concerned with a self-proclaimed Devil lover. “When you’re a vegetarian, don’t go to a hamburger store,” advises one in all his former colleagues.
What are we to make of the crew who apparently didn’t realise a barely aware Wooden was, she says now, being raped by Manson as they filmed the Coronary heart-Formed Glasses – a Lolita reference – music video? Their silence and professed ignorance is proof, in keeping with King, of one other of these “full fabrications” by a girl decided “to destroy Brian professionally and emotionally”. Once more, it’s attainable to really feel fairly in any other case.
What can we make of the media who at his peak uncritically adored Manson’s controversial methods and infinite quotability? Not that every one of his feedback made it into print. The final episode incorporates beforehand unheard excerpts of the audiotapes that have been a prelude to a Rolling Stone journal piece. For instance, “I’m not into rape by any means … I want to interrupt a girl right down to the purpose the place they don’t have any selection however to undergo me. Rape is for cowards, for lazy individuals.” It chimes completely with the onscreen testimonies of his alleged victims, together with and particularly Wooden. However it was in all probability simply his persona talking. Only a efficiency. As a result of who may imagine there are males on the market who’re actually like that?
Marilyn Manson: Unmasked is on Channel 4 now
